Autism psychopathy survey

Post Reply New Topic

I'm interested in seeing how autistic and psychopathic traits interact. Although psychopathy and autism are unrelated conditions, they can coexist in the same person. I'm wondering if that results in different characteristics than either condition alone.

If you want to take the survey, click here:
http://www.tigersurvey.com/Survey.aspx?id=177540

what about your results?

Unfortunately I don't have the technical skill to make my own survey page, and all the free survey websites either give the survey writer detailed results or allow automated scoring, not both.

I'll add a question where you can enter an email address. If I have time I'll tell you your results.

Bumping this because I need more results.

I started to take it, then it turned out to be really long. Hopefully I will remember to take it when I have the attention span to complete it. Should I try to finish it by friday or sooner?

I think a study was once conducted on AS and ADHD and personality disorders, which is relevant as Psychopathy is a form of Anti-Social Personallity Disorder, a type B personality disorder. I think it was found that while people with AS were more likely to have A and C personality disorders, they were less likely to have class B disorders, and everyone with ASPD in the study group either had just ADHD or ADHD and AS or something like that.

Do you understand what "psychopathy" is?

It's a psychological pathology. Autism is a neurological disorder. Boolean would suggest that a psychological pathology can occur within the neuropathways affected by the specific autistic adjustment. The reason the American Psychological (and psychiatric) Association hasn't created consensus on criteria for "psychopath" is because forensic evidence, including brain studies (*points at herself*) suggests that term is purely colloquial in nature, and non-definitive. Really, it's used by people nescient of current research.

To that end, any time you mix and mingle pathologies, and add humans, you're going to come up with a unique individual. I will say that I've never seen a real case of an autistic child with a Axis II diagnosis that couldn't be explained away by maladaptive communication or social skills. A long life of the child screaming inside, "Please, god, why won't you listen to me?!"

And... at the end of the day, we should be trying to pathologize LESS, not more. Over pathologizing people is just Bad Medicine. :-/

Bloom_

Yes, I've linked that study several times, although it covered the entire spectrum and not just AS.

I figured I'd give the test a try but the meaning of the vocabulary used in the self-report psychopathy scale eludes me.

Caring? Like, emotionally? Or meaning taking into consideration because it's fun to? Same with concerned. Obviously everything that I think about concerns me or I wouldn't bother to think about it but I know there is emotional concern too which is completely different.

Ah, I'm a nightmare with tests like that.

No, there's actually extensive research showing that it's a distinct syndrome. Just plug 'psychopathy' into Google Scholar and you'll find literally hundreds of articles. Psychopaths have distinct characteristics, not only behaviorally, but in terms of physiological reactivity, understanding of morality, performance on certain learning tasks, and so forth.

And the DSM-5 has redesigned criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder so that it's now synonymous with psychopathy, as well as adding a 'callous unemotional' subtype to conduct disorder to identify juvenile psychopaths.


Sora, caring and concern in the psychopathy scale both refer to emotional states.

i think the term syndrome suggests the cause is not known.

this is kind of off topic but i want to write it down

I have to agree that pathologising can be harmful when trying to understand things but i do appreciate some sort of classification is required. The impression i get of the DSM though is that it is far from ideal.

there is a lot of variation in symptoms/behaviours displayed in most medical conditions. in terms of the development of a disorder of the brain there are so many variables that there will rarely be identical cases. with something that is as vague as what the DSM contains, i think the chances of finding multiple origins, and as a result perhaps entirely different brains/minds within the group described as psychopaths is likely

There is a gap in our understanding of how psychology relates to neurology. Neuroscience at the network and cellular level is likely where good explanations of the real causes of mental disorders will be found.

I have an opinion of psychology (which may be a bit simple) that most of it's observational tools are not for looking at the biological level. There are some but they display effect not affect. fMRI has been popularised as a brain scan, which allows us to understand what is really causing things in the brain. fMRI shows something but what it shows is vauge.

As far as i know fMRI only shows increased blood flow which is thought to indicate neuronal activity. the idea that specific areas of the brain contain specific functions is not exactly the whole explanation of affect and effect.


E2A:

I'm curious what the survey is for if anything other than your own interest? i don't want to discourage you but i wonder what you can learn from comparing numbers from the outcomes of each test? i know the AQ is a single numerical value. are the other test results single numbers. I mean, what can you learn from comparing some numbers from several psychological tests that are kind of catch all descriptors for disorders?

[EDIT] Good luck.

_Bloom

I've read that autism and psychopathy can coexist (at about the rate expected by chance). However, autistics and psychopaths tend to be opposites in certain ways - autistics tend to hate newness and change, while psychopaths tend to be sensation seekers. So I'm interested in which pattern would predominate in psychopathic autistics - the psychopathic style or the autistic one?

Hello. My name is Rascal. I am an aspie and a psychopath. I have found great joy in torturing people with 2 hour dissertations on my special interests since I was a child. It started with lecturing puppies on baseball cards when I was 7 and has evolved into torturing people with unsolicited lectures on numbers and arithmetic. I've tried to be good but every time I hear a victim plead, "please God make it stop, the numbers are killing me!" it just makes me want to do it again and again.

P.S. And again.

Lol.

I was going to try the survey, until I was asked this:

5. If you would like to know your results, please enter your email address and I'll try to get back to you.

Is it possible to get the results without submitting an email address?